I’m not sure what happened with the Contra project to be quite honest. I was really giving it my all a few months ago, and for whatever reason things fell apart and production has seemingly come to a halt. I’ve attempted several times to pick up where I left off, only becoming frustrated with it. I have one really nice shot that’s mostly done, but I think what happened was that I let that shot get the best of me. However, one nice shot can’t save what is arguably a disaster of a short at the moment. I just feel stuck with it, in very much the same way I was with Pizza Links. I’ve combed through my storyboard boards countless times, completely redoing them multiple times. I’ve tried to paint some important backgrounds only to come away from them not feeling happy about what I produced. I still don’t have an actual script hammered down. Essentially, it’s gotten to the point where I need to distance myself from it, but still need to move on creatively. I’ve spent MONTHS dwelling over it. Months dwelling over a 30 second short isn’t healthy, and it’s not getting me anywhere. I’ve fallen behind on ROM because of this, and now I fear Vol 2 may not even be finished by the years end. It’s a bummer. Like, an absolutely huge fucking bummer.

I still think there’s a good short inside the Contra episode. Like I said, Pizza Links had problems too and look how that turned out in the end (I mean, unless you hated it of course). I can get there with Contra, I just think that maybe I need to switch gears a bit. I need to do something that’s very much different from what I’ve created for ROM before.

So that’s where this new short, tentatively titled Link’s Confidence, comes into play. Early on I decided that I didn’t want to revisit games I already covered, but I had this idea for what could be a cool Zelda short that I needed to just abandon that rule. I feel pretty good about this idea, and it’s different enough from something like Pizza Links that it’s worth visiting this idea. What I can tell you is that it’s not going to be a comedic short, though that’s not to say it’s going to be completely dead serious. The goal here is to capture a great moment from Zelda that always stuck with me through the years. Being that I want ROM Vol 2 to really focus on that whole “Memory” aspect of this era of gaming, I’m thinking it’s safe to do something that doesn’t quite end with a gag. The short, I think, is going to be very much in line with something like Ninja. Hopefully exciting to watch, but with that bit of Shamoozal charm (at least, I think we have some charm).

Above are some of sketches and designs I’ve done thus far which you can click to get a better view of. Yeah, that’s how early into development this thing is that the only stuff that exists are sketches and ideas I jotted down in a notebook. As you can see, there are a lot of Link poses, and the dragon is the Aquamentis boss from the first Legend of Zelda. I think you can pretty much fill in the blanks from there, and if you can make sense of these sketches probably get an idea for the direction I’m headed with this.

So there it is. I’ll hopefully update this blog with progress as I move forward. I’m really excited about working on this and I’m hoping that excitement lasts and will carry through the duration of this project. Wish me luck!